Truck-to-Ship Hydrogen Bunkering

Mobile hydrogen bunkering by tube trailer or cryogenic tanker: how truck-to-ship delivery works, real examples from MF Hydra and Windcat, and why it's the default for early adopters.

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Truck-to-Ship Hydrogen Bunkering

Mobile delivery by road tanker or tube trailer — the lowest fixed-infrastructure-cost of the four bunkering methods, and the one that’s actually put the most hydrogen-powered vessels into real operation to date.

Where a fixed shore installation requires building permanent infrastructure at a specific quay, truck-to-ship needs almost none: a truck carrying compressed or liquid hydrogen parks at the berth, connects a hose to the vessel’s manifold, and transfers fuel directly. No pipeline, no on-site production, no dedicated storage tank at the port. That flexibility is exactly why it’s been the default choice for nearly every hydrogen vessel demonstrator and early commercial operator so far.

How It Works

CH2 delivery: a tube trailer — typically rated around 500 bar — carries compressed hydrogen to the quay. Transfer uses cascade filling (progressively higher-pressure banks) to fill the vessel’s onboard tanks as close to full pressure as the differential allows.
LH2 delivery: a cryogenic road tanker carries liquid hydrogen at −253°C. Transfer requires a vacuum-insulated hose connection and careful boil-off management during the transfer itself, since any warming during connection generates gas that has to be vented or captured.
Both methods depend entirely on road transport from wherever the hydrogen is actually produced or liquefied to the port — which is often much further away than the voyage itself.

Real Examples

Vessel / operator	H2 form	Supply route	Notes
MF Hydra (Norled)	LH2	Leuna, Germany → Hjelmeland, Norway (~1,300 km / 800 miles by truck)	The world’s first LH2-powered ferry; Linde Engineering supplied the ship’s hydrogen system, Ballard the fuel cells. Bunkered by truck-to-ship repeatedly with proven performance since 2023 — the supply route is longer than most of the ferry’s actual sailing distance
Windcat / Hydrocat CTVs (CMB.TECH)	CH2	Mobile 40 ft, 500 bar trailers	Purpose-built mobile trailers enable remote refuelling wherever the vessel is operating, without needing dedicated port infrastructure — practical for offshore crew transfer vessels that don’t call the same berth every time
Hydrotug 1 (Port of Antwerp-Bruges)	CH2	Air Liquide trailer parked in port premises	World’s first hydrogen-powered tugboat, refuelled from a high-pressure trailer rather than fixed infrastructure

MF Hydra’s case is the starkest illustration of truck-to-ship’s real cost: the ferry itself sails a short, fixed Norwegian coastal route, but its fuel travels roughly 800 miles by road from Germany before it ever reaches the truck-to-ship transfer. That’s not a flaw specific to MF Hydra — it’s the current state of LH2 production geography in Europe, and it’s exactly the gap that fixed installations like Bodø’s are designed to close by producing hydrogen at the port itself.

Why It’s the Default for Early Adopters

Truck-to-ship requires no bet on a specific port’s future hydrogen demand — a shipowner can start operating without waiting for anyone to build fixed infrastructure, and can change ports without stranding a capital investment. The trade-off is transfer speed (slower than a fixed installation, per the bunkering methods comparison) and total supply-chain cost when the hydrogen source is far from the port, as with MF Hydra. For operators with irregular routes or while proving out a new vessel concept, that trade-off has consistently made sense — which is why nearly every hydrogen vessel demonstrator on this site’s ships database started this way.

Open Questions

Supply distance economics. How much of green hydrogen’s cost premium for a vessel like MF Hydra comes from the fuel itself versus 800 miles of road transport? Neither figure is separately disclosed in public sources we’ve found.
Trailer standardisation. CH2 trailers (Windcat/CMB.TECH’s 40 ft, 500 bar units) and LH2 tankers (MF Hydra’s route) are largely bespoke to each operator today; whether a standardised trailer spec emerges as more vessels adopt this method is an open industry question.
When does truck-to-ship stop making sense? As individual ports accumulate enough hydrogen vessel traffic, the case for converting to a fixed installation strengthens — Bodø is effectively that transition happening in real time for Torghatten Nord’s route.